Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

I fully support the motion tabled by my colleague, Deputy Brian Hayes. My first reaction to the co-location concept was amazement because there is no way it can benefit public patients who cannot gain access to hospital beds at present and remain on trolleys and waiting lists.

The proposal before us, as my colleague Deputy Coveney has pointed out, will not in any way alleviate the problems that exist. In fact, it will contribute to them. I cannot understand how private patients who are allegedly occupying public beds in public hospitals at present will suddenly disappear from the face of the earth, to be replaced by public patients. I do not think that will happen.

A new formula has been found. A number of years ago when Deputy Micheál Martin was Minister for Health and Children, he decided to solve the health problem. He had discovered that the problem was the health boards, so he abolished them. That was the panacea that was going to solve all the health problems for the foreseeable future. What happened? Absolutely nothing happened, except that the problems that existed before got immeasurably worse. This has gone on and on. The current Minister for Health and Children and former Tánaiste has obviously been in the Department, shifting around and sifting in the sands, looking for some other magic formula to solve the health problems.

It will not work. In four or five years' time somebody will tumble to the notion that it was a bad, expensive experiment. In the mid-1980s a proposal was put forward to realise as much from State assets as possible. The Government decided to sell sites owned by CIE, Iarnród Éireann and other lands owned by the State. That is what happened and a number of years later people asked why it was done. Why we are doing this now? There is no evidence to support the concept that this proposal will address the issue that must be addressed, namely the deficit in the public health service.

I cannot see any evidence of the much vaunted benefit to the public health sector and no Government speaker has illustrated from where it will derive. If one discusses the issue with health service workers, they will tell one that the service is full of chiefs, with not enough Indians. There are many turf wars going on and health workers will tell one that readily.

Let us examine some of the structures that will emerge. Let us suppose the proposal goes wrong, which I believe it will. How will we unravel the leases on the white elephants sitting on public hospital grounds for our lifetime and long after that? How will the beds be shared out and in what proportion? The Minister said these matters will be resolved but many other simpler issues within the health service have not yet been resolved and will not be in our lifetime unless some other formula is found.

The delivery of health services begins with local health centres. We have a reasonably good network of health centres throughout the country which could be upgraded, thus relieving a considerable amount of the burden on accident and emergency departments, providing a very valuable service, complimentary to hospital services.

I worry about the logic behind this proposal. In recent years, in the Department of Health and Children, somebody who Members of this House cannot identify, has been making decisions. Somebody made a decision to close St. Luke's Hospital and to relocate the children's hospital to a place, it was said, which would be convenient because it was on bus, train and Luas routes. One must ask who goes to hospital on a bus or a train. Has anyone heard of a child or adult doing that? What motivated the people who came up with those answers? Do they think we are all fools? With regard to the proposed relocation of the children's hospital, surely someone argued that the Mater Hospital site is very confined and inaccessible from all quarters and that it would be better to build a new hospital on a site that is accessible, readily available and large enough to accommodate the requirements of that sector for the foreseeable future. That did not happen, however, and it is unlikely to occur. I want to issue a friendly warning to Members on the Government side of the House. I do not know whether that was a policy of the Progressive Democrats, Fianna Fáil, the Green Party or the Independents, but there must be some policy there that somebody will own up to.

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